On May 12, 1940, Argentina's Foreign Minister José Maria Cantilo, outraged by the German invasion of Western Europe two days before, called upon the Americas to abandon what he called "the dead conception" of neutrality for a realistic nonbelligerency. Last week, one year and 16 days later, Argentina's Acting President Ramon S. Castillo "reaffirmed" his country's neutrality. During the year the U.S. had abandoned the dead conception of neutrality for a realistic near-belligerency. Argentina declined to follow its own original advice.
If this was not a victory for the Nazis, it was surely no triumph for all the U.S. agencies which have spent a year and much U.S. time and money trying to persuade Latin America that loyalty is hemispheric.
When the U.S. public woke up to the fact that organized fifth columns were scattered throughout both the Americas, the U.S. already had four official agencies devoted to keeping the Americas one big family: the Pan American Union, the Department of State's Division of Cultural Relations, the Library of Congress' Hispanic Foundation, The Inter-Departmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics. Also interested were no less than 16 semi-official organizations such as the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America and the Council for Pan American Democracy, plus many smaller groups. These, however, did not seem to be enough. Into the breach sped an army of energetic amateurs who were soon brevetted with official status.
Quarterback of this team was 32-year-old Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, a good-looking Dartmouth grandson of John D. He and President Roosevelt had earnestly discussed Latin America first in 1939. Last year Nelson Rockefeller got some of his young friends to help him draft a memorandum to Franklin Roosevelt's Harry Hopkins proposing the creation of an independent agency to improve U.S.-Latin American relations. Last August Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order creating a branch of the Council of National Defense with the windy title of Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics. Nelson Rockefeller became Coordinator of C&CRBTAR.
For the first six or eight months of its existence Nelson Rockefeller's office was known around Washington chiefly for its sex appeal and the brash energy of its occupant. Visitors were decorously received by a brunette bombshell with a rippling voice, ushered into a blue-leather-decorated office by a blonde vision. There they found Mr. Rockefeller ready to listen to any scheme to promote good-neighborly relations. Outside the office Mr. Rockefeller astonished official Washington by his ability to pop in & out of a dozen committee meetings a day, to write innumerable memorandums, to argue lengthily with Congressmen, to send all over Latin America young men who astonished the natives with their apparent naïvete. The State Department, which cherished the professional's distaste for the amateur and had not been consulted about the Committee's creation, developed toward it an attitude of chilly reserve.